sweedler, from the sacred conspiracy (2005)

FROM THE SACRED CONSPIRACYTO THE UNAVOWABLE COMMUNITY:BATAILLE, BLANCHOT AND LAURES LE SACRE

MILO SWEEDLER

Abstract

This article analyses the importance of the writings of Laure (pseudonym ofColette Peignot) for Georges Batailles communitarian projects of the late1930s and early 1940s and for Maurice Blanchots interpretation of theseprojects. Through readings of theoretical essays by Bataille, his annotatededition of Laures Le Sacre (published illegally in 1939, only months after theauthors death, and distributed clandestinely to a restricted group of readers),and Blanchots La Communaute inavouable, I argue that Laures book functionsas the literary analogue to two avant-garde communities in which Laure andBataille were involved Acephale and the College of Sociology and thatthis same book is at the heart of the unavowable community theorized byBlanchot.Batailles justication for publishing Laures writings echoes the very terms

he uses to describe his group projects of the late 1930s: community, communi-cation, the sacred, sacrice. I argue that, in publishing and distributing herbook, Bataille effectively sancties Laure, turning her into a martyr for thecommunity. However, in contrast to Acephale and the College of Sociology,the community founded over Laures dead body was a virtual community:one based on the members solitary experiences of reading. Laure becomesthe gurehead of an unavowable community, as Blanchots locution wouldhave it.

On 7 November 1938, Colette Peignot (known to posterity as Laure, aname to which I will return) died in the apartment she shared withGeorges Bataille in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, in the western suburbs ofParis. In the months following her death from tuberculosis, at the ageof thirty-ve Bataille published a selection of her writings under thetitle Le Sacre.1 The publication of this book violated the wishes of thePeignot family, who had the legal rights to the papers in question, andthe particularities of Batailles edition may reect this circumstance.Without any indication from the publishing house (Deux Artisans,

# The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for FrenchStudies. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: [email protected]

1 Credit for the publication of LauresLe Sacre is generally given to both Bataille and Michel Leiris. Thetwo men probably did cooperate on the volume, but, it would appear, not in equal measure. Batailleassumed full responsibility not only for the editorial choices, but also for the notes to Le Sacre. (Cf.Louis Yvert, Bibliographie des ecrits de Michel Leiris: 1924 a` 1995 (Paris, Jean-Michel Place, 1996), p. 83)In his Preface to the Ecrits de Laure, Jerome Peignot states that the title of Le Sacre is Batailles as well(p. 38). The selection of texts, the title, the notes: these are all, it would appear, Batailles.

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apparently), the run was limited to 200 numbered copies, personally givenby the editor to a select group of readers, whose names are inscribed in therespective copies.2 But there may be other, more theoretically based reasonsfor restricting this community of readers. Laures writings are dechirants(heartrending, harrowing, agonizing, wounding, lacerating), as Batailleafrms in his concluding note to Le Sacre. They risk performing on thereader the violence that they describe. Is this not precisely the sort of experi-ence that Bataille strove to create in his communitarian projects projectsfor communities that were restricted, by decision, to the small group ofadepts capable of experiencing such violence? In this article, I shall rstexamine the extent to which Le Sacre functions, according to Bataillesown theory of communication, as the literary analogue to the activities oftwo such communities Acephale, the secret society that met in theforest of Saint-Nom-la-Brete`che to resuscitate the sacred in a profaneworld, and the Colle`ge de Sociologie, the brotherhood that convened inthe backroom of a bookstore in the Latin Quarter in order to engage inthe enterprise they called sacred sociology. I shall then consider the rolethat the same text plays, according to Maurice Blanchot, in the unavowablecommunity formed in the wake of the death of Laure, whose members metonly in their solitary experiences of reading.Let us begin with an oft-cited sentence from Batailles concluding note to

his edition of Le Sacre: Avant de mourir, [Laure] a marque formellementson desir que son temoignage ne reste pas incommunique, afrmant quilne faut pas sisoler, rien nayant de sens que ce qui existe pour dautresetres.3 A no less frequently cited statement by Laure in a letter to MichelLeiris would seem to corroborate this testimony: Je pense aussi que cequi est ecrit doit etre communique.4 As she writes a few lines later, in expla-nation of this statement, il sagissait bien de manuscrit! (E, p. 266).Batailles justication seems to be clear: since Laure formally indicatedher desire to communicate her testimony, his publication of her workwould be an act of loyalty. He would effectively be fullling the authorswishes by bringing her writings into print.The context of the sentence just cited from Batailles concluding note to

Le Sacre greatly complicates this justication. The afrmation that beforedying Laure formally indicated her wish that her testimony should notremain uncommunicated is preceded by a long citation from Jeronimo

2 Similar restrictions affected the 1943 edition of Laures Histoire dune petite lle, of which onlythirty-three copies were printed. In contrast to Le Sacre, which is essentially Batailles edition, theevidence suggests that the editorial work for the Histoire was done primarily by Leiris.3 Ecrits de Laure, ed. by Jerome Peignot et al. (Paris, Pauvert, 1979), p. 137. All subsequent citations of

this text will be incorporated into the text under the abbreviation E.4 It is Jean-Pierre Faye, one of the editors of the Ecrits de Laure, who, drawing on the authority of both

Laures original editor and the author herself, made these statements so famous in his battle to help bringlegal editions of Laures writings into print in the 1970s.

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Gracians Opuscules, in which that author argues against the publication ofsacred texts. Bataille more or less explicitly insists in his notes that LeSacre is one such text.5 The editor virtually argues, in a note to his ownpublication of a sacred text, against the publication of sacred texts.Moreover, the passage just following the citation of Opuscules imputes thisargument to Laure. It is worth quoting the nal paragraph of the conclud-ing note to Le Sacre in its entirety in order to glean the complexity ofBatailles position. Immediately following the citation of Opuscules, whichends with the words Jai des sympathies pour la re`gle pythagoriciennequi ordonnait de cacher les choses profondes et sacrees, Bataille states:

Une preoccupation du meme ordre a` laquelle se liait visiblement son angoisse a souventete exprimee par Laure, parlant en general. Avant de mourir, elle a marque formellement sondesir que son temoignage ne reste pas incommunique, afrmant quil ne faut pas sisoler,rien nayant de sens que ce qui existe pour dautres etres. Mais la mise`re inherente a` toutce qui est litterature lui faisait horreur: car elle avait le plus grand souci qui puisse seconcevoir de ne pas livrer ce qui lui apparaissait dechirant a` ceux qui ne peuvent pas etredechires. (E, p. 137)

The nal clause of the rst sentence here, which species that Laure spokein general (read: not in relation to her own work) of her scepticism at theidea of publishing sacred texts, could be interpreted as a justication forpublishing of Le Sacre. According to this interpretation, the secondsentence would clarify the point: Laure spoke in general of the necessity ofkeeping profound and sacred things hidden, but she formally indicatedthat her own testimony be communicated. But this argument, which wouldimply that Laures text should not be included in the canon of textsdescribed by Gracian (that the text Le Sacre is, in effect, not a sacredtext), goes against the grain of the note as a whole. This note presents atbest a back-and-forth movement in which the author argues rst against,then for, and nally against the idea of publishing Laures work. Thestatement that Laure formally indicated her wish that her testimonyshould not remain uncommunicated is both preceded and followed bywhat amounts to an argument against the publication of her text. Rather, itshould be communicated. What is the relation between publication andcommunication? The lack of any conjunction (such as but or however)between the rst and second sentences could suggest that Batailleperceives a continuity between Laures preoccupation with not publishingsacred texts and her wish that her own text should not not be communicated.In other words, the second sentence can be read as either a qualication oran exemplication of the rst. In either case, an opposition is set up betweencommunication and publication.

5 Cf., for example, Batailles long note to the title of Le Sacre, which opens with the words La represen-tation du sacre dans ce texte temoigne dune experience vecue (E, p. 87).

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Communication is a highly charged term in Batailles lexicon, to which Iwill return. For the moment, I will content myself with pointing out a fairlymundane use of the word communication in modern French. This wordretains a meaning that is rare in modern usage of its English cognate:that of the transmission of material objects (such as books) from oneperson to another. Understood in this sense, the distinction between com-munication and publication could be construed in terms of the means bywhich Laures writings are disseminated. Bataille does not render thesewritings public; he communicates them to a select group of readers. It isto this community of readers that the note cited above is addressed. Theconcluding note to Le Sacre reads, in sum, like a justication for the textpublished in 1939: the one limited to 200 numbered, inscribed copies dis-tributed personally by the editor to a restricted community of readers. Itdoes not present an argument in favour of commercial publication forpopular consumption. Perhaps the word publication (from publicare, tomake public) in the context of Le Sacre is a misnomer: private publicationis something of an oxymoron.The nal sentence of the note to Le Sacrewould seem to provide, then, an

explanation to the restricted community of readers of the book for thenecessity of restricting this community. As if to justify the limited editionof Le Sacre and the secrecy in which it is to circulate, Bataille concludeshis nal note to the book with the afrmation that Laure avait le plusgrand souci qui puisse se concevoir de ne pas livrer ce qui lui apparaissaitdechirant a` ceux qui ne peuvent pas etre dechires. One is reminded hereof a remark that Bataille made to Pierre Prevost, recounted by the latter,upon giving him a copy of Le Sacre: Bataille me demanda de ne jamaismen defaire ni le preter sans lui en avoir parle auparavant.6 Whether ornot Batailles concern here is that the book might fall into the hands ofthose who opposed the publication of the work (in particular, CharlesPeignot, Laures brother, with whom Bataille was engaged in an acrimo-nious correspondence during the months preceding the publication of LeSacre ) is open to speculation.7 His request to Prevost can be interpretedas a fear of being discovered by the legal owners of the manuscript, withthe ensuing legal battle and potential conscation of the book that thatdiscovery could entail. In the concluding note to the text, however, hisconcerns are presented in terms of loyalty: to allow the book to fall intothe hands of those who are incapable of reading it would be a betrayal ofthe author. To the extent that this theoretical justication overridesBatailles practical, legal concerns, the book that he brings into printconforms to Gracians argument that sacred texts should be restricted to

6Rencontre Georges Bataille (Paris, Jean-Michel Place, 1987), p. 82.7 Cf. Laure, Une Rupture, ed. by Jerome Peignot and Anne Roche (Paris, Cendres, 1999), pp. 17175.




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the community of readers capable of understanding them: in this case, thosecapable of being dechires.Maurice Nadeau aptly entitled his review of the rst edition of the Ecrits

de Laure Des mots qui brulent.8 Bearing in mind the closing words ofBatailles nal note to Le Sacre, one might be tempted to slightly alter theformula: for the editor, it is a question of mots qui dechirent. The worddechires, translated by Jeanine Herman as moved, means literally rippedapart or torn in pieces.9 The word is not to be taken lightly. Promptedat least in part by the absolute Zerrissenheit in which Geist nds itselfwhen confronting death (in Hegels Phenomenology of Spirit, which Bataillehad been studying for years from 1933 to 1939 with AlexandreKoje`ve), the term would hyperbolically imply that Laures text risksexposing the reader to an experience of the order of death itself.10

Dechirement and the related terms dechirer and dechirure occur with greatfrequency in Batailles writings from the period. I cite, for example (froma page of Le Colle`ge de Sociologie on which the word appears, in oneform or another, no less than nine times), an elaboration of what Bataillecalls the direction double of the movements of the esh: en passer parla chair, en passer par ce point ou` se dechire en elle lunite de lapersonne, est necessaire si lon veut en se perdant se retrouver danslunite de lamour (OC, ii, 369). We recognize here Batailles famoustheory of communication, in which the communicants tear themselvesapart in order to create a new being different from either of them. Such amovement happens through the esh: communication, as Bataille elabor-ates the term here, is carnal. More precisely, it happens through what hecalls dechirures: sex organs. The point ou` se dechire en [la chair] lunite dela personne referred to in the above citation is the point on a personsbody that fuses with anothers, which Bataille calls throughout this essaydechirure. It is through a fault, tear, rip or wound in a person thatone communicates with another. Lovers communicate through theirwounds. Deux etres communiquent entre eux dans la premie`re phase,Bataille says, par leurs dechirures cachees (OC, ii, 369). Without this

8La Quinzaine Litteraire (1630 Sept. 1971), 1011.9 Laure, The Collected Writings, trans. by Jeanine Herman (San Francisco, City Lights, 1995), p. 94.10 The term dechirement will form the crux of Batailles later polemic with Koje`ve in Hegel, la mort

et le sacrice. Whereas Koje`ve privileges the masterslave dialectic in his interpretation of the Phenom-enology, Bataille places absolute Zerrissenheit at the centre of his own reading of Hegel: Lesprit nobtient saverite quen se trouvant soi-meme dans le dechirement absolu [absolute Zerrissenheit ], Bataille afrms,making the Hegelian formulation his own (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, La Phenomenologie delesprit, vol. i, trans. by Jean Hyppolite (Paris, Aubier, 1939), p. 29. Cited in Bataille, uvres comple`tes,ed. by Denis Hollier, Thadee Klossowski and Francis Marmande, 12 vols (Paris, Gallimard, 197088),xii, 335). In a sentence that crystallizes the difference between Koje`ves and Batailles versions ofHegel, Bataille notes, with remarkable economy and precision, en effet, un tel dechirement saccordemal avec le desir detre reconnu (OC, xii, 339). All subsequent references to Batailles uvres comple`teswill be incorporated into the body of my text under the abbreviation OC, followed by the volumeand page numbers.

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weak spot on a person, which Bataille locates here between a persons legs,he/she would be a self-enclosed monad. Human beings, according toBataille, whether male or female, are not-wholes (to borrow the term thatLacan uses to describe one half of the human race).Bataille generalizes his conception of communication into a universal law

a few paragraphs later in the essay: Je propose dadmettre comme une loique les etres humains ne sont jamais unis entre eux que par des dechiruresou des blessures (OC, ii, 370). Vincent Kaufmann notes an equivocation central to Batailles thinking on communication at the heart of thisuniversal law: Reste alors a` savoir si les humains tiennent a` etre unis oua` se dechirer. Lafrmation de Bataille, deliberement ambigue, faitmiroiter une perverse inversion de la n et des moyens: la communautepassant par la dechirure, cest aussi la communaute au service de ladechirure.11 This equivocation to which correspond the twomovements of the esh alluded to above, one toward fusion, the othertoward dechirement would suggest, in the case of the communicationof Laures texte dechirant to those who can be dechires, that Bataille may beas interested in tearing apart the community as he is in bringing it together.It is not a question here of choosing between the two processes. The

equivocation between the constitution and the destitution of communityis central to Batailles understanding of communication. It is dechirureitself that brings the community together, and, conversely and correlatively,as we will see, it is unity that tears it apart. Fusion and dechirement are notopposed tendencies in Batailles thinking. They are, on the contrary, thetwin forces of communication itself.The equivocation that Bataille introduces between communication and

the resulting constitution or destitution of the collective nds a corollary onthe individual level: Il est difcile de savoir [. . .] jusqua` quel point letrecherche la vie et la puissance, jusqua` quel point il est porte a` se dechirer,a` se perdre, en meme temps a` dechirer, a` perdre autrui (OC, ii, 369). Letus note here that communication cuts both ways: the communicant bothse dechire and dechire autrui. In the case of eroticism, this movement wouldtear apart each of the two lovers; in the case of the literary work, itwould tear apart both the reader and the writer. It is Denis Hollier whoarticulates the relation between these two types of communication: Il faut[. . .] comprendre la litterature elle-meme, la pratique de lecriture et de lalecture amorcee par Bataille, comme pratique erotique: il ny a plus de`s lorsune litterature erotique; erotisme et litterature sont indissociables, rigoureu-sement coextensifs.12 Or, as Bataille famously puts it in the Avant-Proposto La Litterature et le mal, La litterature est communication: an afrmation

11Poetique des groupes litteraires: avant-gardes 19201970 (Paris, PUF, 1997), p. 109.12La Prise de la Concorde, suivi de Les dimanches de la vie (Paris, Gallimard, 1993), p. 124.




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which would presuppose, as a condition for the possibility of literature, thatboth the reader and the writer have dechirures and, as such, can be dechires(OC, ix, 171). The communication in which the writer engages can takeplace only if the wound that he or she exposes nds a correspondingopening on the part of the reader.In the case of Le Sacre, the two communicants would be, in the rst place,

the author, Laure who, Bataille says in his introductory note to Le Sacre,se dechirait aux ronces dont elle sentourait jusqua` netre quune plaie(E, p. 130) and the reader, Bataille, who states in an autobiographicalnote written in the third person, Une mort la dechire en 1938 (OC, vii,462). In the second place, Bataille, communitarian that he is, wishes toshare the experience by communicating these ecrits dechirants to thosewho can be dechires.Two names for this community come to mind: Acephale, the secret

society organized by Bataille that met in the late 1930s beneath a thunder-struck oak tree to perform who-knows-what sacred rites, and the Colle`gede Sociologie, the group that fut, according to Bataille, en quelquesorte lactivite exterieure de cette societe secre`te (OC, vii, 461). Lauresrole in each of these communities was, evidence would suggest, at oncemarginal and central. In critical writings on the subject of Lauresrelation to Acephale, the womans marginal-central position takes trulyparadoxical forms. Elisabeth Barille, for example, who writes, inreference to this secret society, that Laure is selon toute vraisemblance saco-fondatrice, also writes, in reference to the same group, Tout adabord commence sans elle: the biographer effectively attributes toLaure the position of co-founder of a society founded without her.13

Marina Galletti, for her part, who argues in her Introduction toLApprenti Sorcier that Laure forms a lien souterrain linking the CercleCommuniste Democratique the dissident communist group that rstbrought Laure and Bataille together, in 1934 to Acephale, alsoremarks, in a footnote appearing some 300 pages later in her book, thatthree members of the secret society testify that she was present at none ofthe groups meetings.14 The existence of a set of instructions, in Batailleshand, to an Acephale meeting in the forest of Saint-Nom-la-Brete`che, aswell as a sketch by Andre Masson of the Acephale gure, both of whichwere found among her papers after her death, conrm that Laure hadsome role in the secret society, but the precise nature of this role remains,like so much related to Acephale (and so much related to Laure), restrictedto rumour and speculation. Her place in this collective remains despite

13Laure: la sainte de labme (Paris, Flammarion, 1997), pp. 325, 322.14Georges Bataille, LApprenti Sorcier: textes, lettres et documents (19321939), ed. and introd. by Marina

Galletti (Paris, La Difference, 1999), p. 343, n. 7.

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and in part because of the many statements on the subject among thebest-guarded secrets of the secret society.Although Laure never made a presentation at the Colle`ge de Sociologie,

it is hard to imagine that she was not present at the groups bi-weeklymeetings, and a set of notes written in direct response to Leiriss only pres-entation to the Colle`ge attests to her presence at least at one (E, p. 8589).Aliette Armel reports that Jean Jamin and Denis Hollier, perhaps the twobest-informed scholars on Leiris, think that Leiriss friendship with Laureplayed an important role in his decision to join his co-founders, Batailleand Roger Caillois, in their enterprise to found a college of sacredsociology.15 Laures presence at the meetings of the Colle`ge may havebeen discreet, but her role behind the scene may well have been less so.By way of conclusion to a discussion of what he perceives to be Leiriss

and Batailles shared love for the recently deceased Laure, ChristopheBident cannily remarks: une autre agonie a dechire les deux amis:Bataille, dans un rare sentiment daccablement et dabandon, se trouveseul a` enterrer le Colle`ge de Sociologie, ou` Laure les avait rassembles.16

The rhetorical economy of Bidents remark, which states the temporalproximity of the death of Laure (7 November 1938) and the death of theColle`ge de Sociologie (4 July 1939), imputes a parallel structure to thetwo events. Let us explore this hypothetical parallel structure.It is in the Colle`ge de Sociologies funeral sermon, as it were (the 4 July

1939 text of Le Colle`ge de Sociologie), that Bataille rst elaborates hisnotion of communication. This text is, as its title suggests, self-referential:it constitutes a description of the community of brothers to the communityof brothers. In order to describe the nature of the bond that ties together and tears apart the members of the sacred community, Bataille hasrecourse to the image of lovers who se dechirent (in both the reexive andreciprocal senses of the verb). As is clear from letters Laure wrote toBataille, the two lovers were involved in a communication of their own.Whether or not Laures relationship with Bataille contributed to herphysical destruction is open to speculation. Her letters do offer evidencethat it contributed to her emotional disintegration (E, p. 23763). This dis-integration is apparent from her earliest letters to him, in 1934, but itbecomes increasingly obvious in her last letters. These nal letters bearwitness to the extent to which Laure was dechiree as a result of her relation-ship with Bataille. Her destitution is particularly poignant in her inability toovercome her consuming jealousy of Batailles erotic relationships withother women, which, apparently, he never ceased pursuing. All of this is

15Michel Leiris (Paris, Fayard, 1997), p. 386.16 Rire pour rire et dol pour mensonge in Bataille-Leiris: lintenable assentiment du monde, ed. by Francis

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allegorized in Batailles nal address to the Colle`ge de Sociologie. I cite, forexample, from the closing paragraphs of this address:

Au-dela` de letre commun [que les amants] rencontrent dans leur etreinte, ils recherchent unaneantissement sans mesure dans une depense violente ou` la possession dun nouvel objet,dune nouvelle femme ou dun nouvel homme nest quun pretexte a` une depense plusaneantissante encore. De la meme facon des hommes plus religieux que les autres cessentdavoir un souci etroit de la communaute pour laquelle sont faits les sacrices. Ils nevivent plus pour la communaute, ils ne vivent plus que pour le sacrice. (OC, ii, 372)

These lines read like a theoretical justication for Batailles erotic relation-ship with Laure and for similar relationships in which he was involvedduring his relationship with her. They also read like a theoretical justica-tion for the dechirement of the Colle`ge de Sociologie. For the true shaman(which, Caillois remarks in an interview several decades after the demiseof the Colle`ge, Bataille sought to embody),17 the sacred community(which was, in an initial stage, an end in itself) becomes a means to theend of communication. Whereas, in the beginning, one gets off in orderto form a community, in a later stage, Bataille suggests, one forms acommunity in order to get off. Bataille sacrices community be thisthe community of brothers (the Colle`ge de Sociologie) or the communityafter which that community is modelled (lovers) to communication.While Bataille was explaining his theory of communication to his col-

leagues at the Colle`ge de Sociologie, he was enacting it with a group ofadepts in the woods. In contrast to the Colle`ge, it appears that Acephalewanted to put its theory into practice. Very little is known about thisgroups activities, its members having taken a vow of silence on thesubject. The pages of the journal Acephale may offer insight into thesocietys interests and concerns, but their endeavours as a society remain,in keeping with one of the groups fundamental rules, secret. Perhaps themost scandalous and, for that reason, the most famous rumour ofAcephales activities is its project to perform a human sacrice. Twonames of possible sacricial victims are mentioned in this regard: Batailleand Laure. Unable to nd a willing executioner (Caillois was apparentlynominated for the position but wanted to have nothing to do with his col-leagues madness), the project was apparently dropped.18 Whether or notthis rumour has any foundation in fact, it does in fantasy. One thinks ofBatailles and Laures shared fascination for a photograph of a man beinghacked apart alive, referred to as the cent morceaux. If Bataille, in contem-plating this image, identies alternately (or simultaneously) with thetorturer and the victim, Laure, for her part, is quite clear on which sideof the torture she places herself: that of the dismembered, not the

17Les Cahiers de Chronos, ed. by Jean-Clarence Lambert (Paris, La Difference, 1991), p. 136.18 Cf. Odile Felgine, Roger Caillois (n.p., Stock, 1994), p. 140.

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dismemberer.19 Whether or not Laures gift of herself en cent morceauxwould have constituted a sociogonic event on the order of sacrice, thegift that she makes, thanks to Bataille, en 200 morceaux, may well have.The purpose of ritual sacrice is both tomake an offering to the gods and

of particular importance to Bataille and company to cement the bondamong the members of the community who partake in the ritual. Or, rather,its primary purpose is to create such a community: to bring together isolatedindividuals in a shared experience that exceeds their individual spheres ofbeing. As Michel Surya unequivocally states, in the context of an analysisof the relation between the death of Colette Peignot (whom I so namehere in order to distinguish her from the author who came to life in1939) and Acephales obsession with sacrice, cette mort ne liapersonne.20 Indeed, the demise of both Acephale and the Colle`gefollowed closely on the heels of the death of Colette Peignot. The womanand the two groups met their fates at roughly the same time. However, iffrom the remains of Colette Peignot Laure arises, likewise, from the ashesof Acephale and the Colle`ge de Sociologie another community arises. Iam not thinking here of the short-lived Colle`ge Socratique, which fromlate 1941 to early 1943 gathered a group of friends (most notably, Batailleand Blanchot) in discussion (especially, in the early days, in discussion ofBatailles LExperience interieure ): this group ne pouvait quechouer,according to Blanchot; it netait projete que comme le dernier soubresautdune tentative communitaire, incapable de se realiser.21 I am thinking,rather, of another sort of community: not one that gathers in forests(Acephale), in the backrooms of a bookstore (the Colle`ge de Sociologie)or in the apartments of friends (the Colle`ge Socratique), but one uniedin dispersion one whose isolated members are brought together intheir individual experiences of reading. I am thinking of the communitythat Blanchot calls unavowable: un petit nombre damis, chacun singulier,et sans rapport oblige des uns avec les autres, la composent en secret par lalecture silencieuse (CI, 39). In tandem with the communication diurnethat takes place during the discussion of such texts as LExperience interieure,exists the communication nocturne, as Blanchot calls it (celle qui ne savouepas), that takes place between the reader and the writer of such texts asBatailles Madame Edwarda and his Le Petit (CI, 39); between the readerand the writer of Madame Edwarda and Le Petit, Blanchot writes but

19 Batailles ongoing fascination with this image is evident in many of his writings. As far as Lauresresponse to this photograph is concerned, see the entry dated 22 January 1938 in Leiriss Journal:C[olette] me parle des supplicies chinois qui ont ete courageux et dont les gens mangent le foie pourse donner du courage; cest un destin quelle envie (Paris, Gallimard, 1992, p. 320).20Georges Bataille: la mort a` luvre (Paris, Gallimard, 1992), p. 310.21La Communaute inavouable (Paris, Minuit, 1983), p. 35. Subsequent references to this text appear under

the abbreviation CI.




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also, he notes a few sentences later, between the reader and the writer ofLe Sacre.Blanchot afrms, in keeping with the sense of respect and the discretion

that characterizes much of his work especially his work on Bataille that no commentary is adequate to the communication in which thisgroup of isolated readers engages:

Rien a` dire qui fut a` sa mesure. Pas de commentaire qui put laccompagner: tout au plus unmot de passe (comme du reste les pages de Laure sur le Sacre publiees et transmisesclandestinement) qui, communiquees [sic ] a` chacun comme sil avait ete seul, nereconstitue pas la conjuration sacree qui avait ete revee jadis, mais, sans romprelisolement, lapprofondit en une solitude vecue en commun. (CI, 39)

This community is, as Blanchots term would have it, unavowable. At best,he proposes, a password accompanies it. True to his sense of discretion,Blanchot does not share the password with his own reader. Might thispassword be none other than Laure?First of all, let us remember, in this context, that, during the time of

which Blanchot writes (the early 1940s: just after the clandestine publicationof Le Sacre ), the real name of the author called Laure had to be kept secretfor legal reasons. The name of Laure would function, under these circum-stances, as a shibboleth of sorts a password for a restricted communityof writers, artists, and intellectuals, many of whom received a copy ofthe text in question. Secondly, let us note a potential proximity betweenthe unavowable Laure and Blanchots own description, cited above, of theunavowable community. All would depend here on how one understoodthe grapheme in question: as the nom feminin that designates a communityor the one that names a woman. Laure in French, like Laura inEnglish, slips between a proper noun and a common noun. The PetitRobert dictionary denes laure ( from the Greek laura ) as a Monaste`reorthodoxe; the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary denes laura (alsoderived from the Greek laura ) as an aggregation of cells, tenanted byrecluse monks under a superior, in Egypt and elsewhere. In Egypt andelsewhere: there exist today in France, Philippe Bonnes informs me, atleast three lauras, in Montmorin, in Parisot and near Perthus.22 Thesethree monasteries, each of which gathers together a group of hermitswho live dispersed in huts around a central chapel, are, as Bonnespoints out, not so much communities, in the standard sense of the word, asparadoxical gatherings of solitary individuals. Nothing would be furtherremoved from the group projects of Acephale and the Colle`ge de Sociologiethan such a gathering of solitary individuals. Nothing would be closer to itthan the unavowable community that, Blanchot suggests, was formed

22 Personal interview.

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among the readers of Le Sacre in the years following the death of ColettePeignot.Granted, Blanchot does not appear to give precedence to Laures text. On

the contrary,Madame Edwarda and Le Petit are his primary examples, and LeSacre is included as an afterthought, in parentheses and qualied by asomewhat belittling comme du reste. The impossible syntax ofBlanchots sentence, however, would attribute to Laures text an import-ance that, lexically and semantically, it does not have: un mot de passe(comme du reste les pages de Laure sur le Sacre publiees et transmises clan-destinement) qui, communiquees [sic ] a` chacun comme sil avait ete seul, nereconstitue pas la conjuration sacree [. . .], mais [. . .] lapprofondit.Semantically, the word communiquees refers to the mot de passe; syntac-tically, it can only refer to les pages de Laure. There is no other possiblefeminine plural antecedent. Read according to the semantics of thesentence, it is the password that deepens the sacred conjuration;according to the syntax, it is the pages by Laure. Pierre Joris, translatorof Blanchots book, opts for the semantic reading (which, it must beadmitted, is much easier to reproduce in English), but the reader of theoriginal French text is left to wonder whether it makes more sense for apassword or a book to be communique to a group of readers.23 Both wouldbe plausible. It is as though, through the impossible conjunction of hissemantics and his syntax, Blanchot gave out the password despite himself.Whether or not Blanchot intends to attribute the importance to Laures

text that his syntax would suggest, Le Sacre does contribute, he clearlyafrms, to the constitution of a community whose members are bondedin separation by their shared, isolated experiences of reading. The bookby Laure lends itself to the foundation of a virtual laure. If, in an actuallaura such as the ones that exist in Montmorin, in Parisot, and nearPerthus the solitary monks are united in their Lord (HOM. Laure, thePetit Robert species), here, in the virtual one described by Blanchot, theywould be united in separation around a text by Laure. In both laures, thedispersed members gather in shared isolation around a /lor/. Like a groupof monks living in solitude but unied in God, the hypothetical lauraformed among the community of readers of Le Sacre would be unied inLaures glorious body: the one resurrected, as Mitsou Ronats aptphrase would have it, in language.24

Colette Peignot is not reborn. Laure (the author) comes to life afterColette Peignot (the woman) has died. The former lives at the expense ofthe latter, and it is the editor, in his role as editor, who presides over thedeath of one and the birth of the other. Bataille is, in this context, the

23The Unavowable Community (Barrytown, Station Hill, 1988), pp. 2021.24 Le corps glorieux de Laure, Change, 12 (n.d.), 2017.




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midwife of Laure to the extent that he is the murderer of Colette Peignot.He commits, on an editorial level, what the writings describe on a textuallevel: sacrice. Chauffeur Allez nimporte ou`: a` la fournaise, a` lavoirie, au bordel, a` labattoir. Il faut que je sois brulee ecartelee couvertedordures et que je sente tous les foutres, que je te repugne bien etpuis apre`s mendormir sur ton epaule (E, p. 256). Thewriter asks to be taken to the slaughterhouse; her editor takes her there.Bataille becomes, in a sense, at the moment Le Sacre comes to print underthe name of Laure, her sacricer. One might recall in a similar vein thefragment in which Laure inventa detre battue, rouee de coups, detreblessee, detre victime, detre bafouee, honnie, meprisee et puis denouveau adoree et sanctiee (E, p. 161). Laure asks to be beaten and humi-liated, then sanctied. Perhaps Bataille carries out her wishes. Perhaps hesancties her.Laure remains among the most provocative and elusive gures of the

twentieth-century French avant-garde. Her premature death put an end toa writing career that might or might not have otherwise been prolic,might or might not have been brilliant. What we retain of her contributionto cultural history is largely via her role in Batailles communitarianprojects, where she functions as a martyr to the community. Thereligious connotations are hard to overlook. In contrast to most religiouscommunities, however (including such communities as Acephale and theColle`ge de Sociologie), the one formed over Laures dead body is avirtual community: one founded on the members solitary experiences ofreading. Laure becomes the gurehead of an unavowable community, asBlanchots locution would have it. In clandestinely distributing Le Sacreto a restricted group of readers, Bataille transforms Colette Peignot into acult gure of the avant-garde and, in this gesture, reincarnates a sacredcommunity whose members are bonded in dechirement.

WILFRID LAURIER UNIVERSITY, WATERLOO, CANADA

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sweedler, from the sacred conspiracy (2005)

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